MII Reports China's Government Has Met its Goals in Private Web Site Crackdown

August 31, 2005

On August 11 and 12, Chinese authorities convened a forum in Shanghai to discuss the results of the recently-concluded nationwide crackdown on private Web site operators, according to an August 16 report in the Ministry of Information Industry's (MII) People's Post and Telecommunications News.

On August 11 and 12, Chinese authorities convened a forum in Shanghai to discuss the results of the recently-concluded nationwide crackdown on private Web site operators, according to an August 16 report in the Ministry of Information Industry's (MII) People's Post and Telecommunications News. The report stated that over 95 percent of Internet content provider Web sites and 89 percent of IP addresses had registered with the MII. According to the report, the crackdown began in September 2004, with Tianjin acting as a test case, and concluded at the end of July 2005, with the registration of 6,641,000 out of 6,693,000 independent domestic domain names. An article in the August 18 edition of Southern Weekend reported that, as part of the campaign, authorities have shut down a "large number of Web sites," using "specialized software to render them inaccessible."

Forum participants included representatives from the communication administration offices and basic telecommunication operators in 31 provinces, municipalities, and autonomous regions. In addition to covering the results of the campaign, the report said participants also discussed six draft regulations currently under consideration, including the "Opinion Regarding the Establishment of Long-Term Effective Work Mechanisms for Internet Administration," "Detailed Working Rules on the Administration of ICP, IP Address, and Domain Name Information Data," and "Measures for Handling Web Sites That Do Not Register."

The report said that Su Jinsheng, an MII official, told the meeting that authorities had established databases for Internet content provider registration, IP address utilization, and domain names, and that this represented the first stage of a "nationwide, coordinated, and integrated Internet Web site administration mechanism." Su said that the next stage would include "solving issues of information accuracy" and how to "appropriately handle Web sites that fail to register."